I can tell the director was really stressed. He didn't wrap up "episode 5" nicely before moving on to "episode 6". As much as many of us were annoyed and debated about the nationalist issues in episodes 4 & 5, this episode was like a timeskip.
The only link they gave back to was Yui thinking about her finally getting Yuuya to adapt to the Shiranui, but broke pretty much the morale of every other Argos Flight member. Not much of a resolving point, I'd say.
If you asked me, there should have been another episode truly resolving Yuuya's issues with the 94-Second. One swordfight and a Yamato-Damashii moment felt too rushed. Yui probably stopped bitching because Yuuya finally stopped complaining about Japanese TSFs being junk.
The continuity gap annoys me, its like I suddenly lost track of who Yuuya and Yui are. So here I am, having to fill it up with my own thoughts, because we all know they won't.
Now I'm done with my complaining, its to the actual episode.
For a TSF exercise on a tropical island, I certainly don't see the TSFs themselves doing anything. I'll write it off since its a fanservice episode, but it would be good to have a scene showing exactly what WORK they did when they were there (Come on, they transferred the TSFs over to the island, for goodness sake). But the nagging feeling tells me they will forget about it after the end of this arc and just shift back to Yukon Base.
Fanservice episode is fanservice, and its definitely top-notch quality when it comes to the animation. No point describing in detail the fanservice (Go watch it again by yourselves), since there's very little, if any, to say and debate about.
VG peeping and Yuuya being your "heroic man that refuses to do so" really reminds me of other anime. Really hammered in the point that this is an ANIME (referring to Japan-animated), I mean VG's acting like the typical perv in other anime (which, by association, are Japanese, although it is true pervs are everywhere).
I'm sure Stella was the one who caught and owned VG though. Its the anime's VG-Stella pairing vibe they love giving off (Because Yuuya will be too busy with Yui and Cryska to bother about Stella).
The Inia-Tarisa scene. Never really liked Tarisa, this is just further reinforcement. But as much as I pity Inia, her suddenly talking like Cryska (We're here because of orders) sounds awkward, because its usually Cryska that does the arguements. But shows that they're alike... like twins.
Then your typical games. I couldn't stop laughing at Inia hugging the tree. It hit me that Cryska and Yui are pretty similar in terms of "maternal instinct" when they volunteered to replace Inia (Although for Cryska, it was only for Inia, and I already saw Yui's tough maternal instinct for Yuuya in the previous episodes).
Then the set-up... blahblahblah... conveniently, the rain was summoned and blah blah blah....
Then we get to character development half of the episode. Fanservice is still there in the glorious form of Yui and Cryska, but with all the sudden seriousness, it becomes a bit mellowed out.
It was fun seeing Yui changing Tsun to Dere during the sprained ankle portion. Its great to see Yuuya being the manly hero who changes Yui to her Dere side. (For the record, I don't dislike Yuuya, even if I was arguing for Yui in episodes 4 & 5, his character is great, I just hated his hatred for the Japanese ruining his professionalism and turning him into a douche bitch in those episodes.) And even when Yui turned into a Dere, she didn't completely turned into a love-bound mush. She retains her strong-headness, her commanding authority, her respect and dignity.
Yuuya cracked her outer shell and its obvious they both know about it. Hell, they're so similar, they make a great couple. Too bad Cryska now threatens the balance. (But hey, its Muv-Luv after all.)
I'll consider this a fanservice episode and rate it according to simply fanservice levels, which they did fantastically. So a 5/5. But in reality, they jumped the shark from episode 5 to 6, and then character development part makes the episode felt disorientated somewhat (Its like a half-baked attempt to do a fanservice episode or a character development episode), so when rated in a normal episode, it gets only a 3/5.
At least there was plenty of Cryska, even if she was unconscious for half the episode. |